I am mailing the following to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, and posting it on their email comment form as an attachment, because the email comment form is limited to 1000 characters, but allows attachments.
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Office of Public Outreach
Department of Conservation and Recreation
251 Causeway Street, Suite 600
Boston, MA 02114
RE: Your meeting, September 30, 2015, 6:30 pm, 806 Mass. Ave. Cambridge, MA
Proposing further destruction on the Charles River.
Gentlemen / Ladies:
1. Introduction.
2. Misdirection.
3. Starvation Wall.
4. Destruction of Little Guys Parking Lot.
5. Continued and expanded use of poisons.
6. Destruction of Playing Fields.
7. Commercialization.
8. Summary.
1. Introduction.
I am writing individually and as Chair of Friends of the White Geese, a Massachusetts Non Profit recognized by the Attorney General since 2002. Our purpose is to stand up to you and to your accomplices in your attacks on the Charles River and its animals.
This follows on the referenced meeting and on 16 years of outrageous destruction, bad faith, flat out lying, and heartless animal abuse by the DCR and its predecessor on the Charles River.
Please note that, as part of my repeated objections to the nonstop outrages coming out of your department, I have suggested to MassDOT that MassDOT seek legislative approval to bar the DCR from open space created out of the Mass. Pike rearrangements near the Charles River and to bar you from Soldiers Field Road. Actually, I think a proper legislative response to your record and to your plans would be to strip you of responsibility, as well, for the Cambridge side of the Charles River from the Longfellow Bridge to the River Street bridge.
It would be impractical to physically attach the letter to Mass DOT. It occupies a large computer file because of all the graphics included. A scanned copy of the letter has been posted in its entirety on the Charles River White Geese Blog at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/charles-r-to-massdot-bar-dcr-from-mass.html.
Rather than repeat the great detail in my MassDOT letter, I incorporate it by reference. Please read it in order to read my total communication, and feel free to download it in its entirety.
The letter, in part, is based on the legislature’s actions in granting MassDOT the Charles River bridges and the legislature’s folding other responsibilities on the Charles River into DCR. This is combined with your continued outrages on the Charles River in spite of the legislative sanctions.
2. Misdirection.
I severely object to your selective “input” on the latest outrages by seeking “input” at Magazine Beach while keeping your many other outrages as secret as possible.
The Magazine Beach package is irresponsible and is based on nearly two decades of irresponsibility. The other items you are ramming through in secret are far more irresponsible. But you are lying of supposed concern for public interest by picking out the least bad of your outrages. Once again, please see the MassDOT letter.
3. Starvation Wall.
The Starvation Wall between the Magazine Beach playing fields and the Charles River is an excellent example of your depravity.
You promised a “lawn to the river” in your sanctified Charles River Master Plan. Instead you are implementing the Charles River Master Plan provision you keep as secret as possible, the provision to kill off or drive away all resident animals you can get away with.
For most of the last 34 years, the Charles River White Geese have lived at, fed at and have been beloved at the Magazine Beach playing fields. They are a tourist attraction and a scientific miracle, but your sickness has the determination to join the rest of our destructive world in killing off as many animals as it is in your power to destroy.
So you have walled off them from the Charles River, and, in the process, have converted the playing field from a riverside treasure to an entity which is indistinguishable from so many other facilities away from the gem of the Charles River.
In your meeting, you admitted that you have driven away users from the river with this bizarre barrier. People come to the Charles River to be part of the Charles River, not to experience a sickly wall of introduced vegetation with no comparable outrage elsewhere on the river.
So you promise to trim it.
Standard game. You build this outrage in secret, in direct violation of your promises. It is blatantly irresponsible and a major failure.
So you are going to trim it.
Behave in a responsible manner. Behave as if you are fit to manage the Charles River, as opposed to heartless animal abusers who set a higher priority on heartless animal abuse than you do on managing the Charles River.
This INTRODUCED outrage should be fully chopped down and replaced with the lawn promised in your lies in the Charles River Master Plan.
And to fit the situation on the rest of the Charles River Basin.
4. Destruction of Little Guys Parking Lot.
Another example of an irresponsible proposal which had no support. It now seems to have one newly visible supporter.
You demand the destruction of this parking lot west of the playing fields, at the foot of Magazine Street. This is needed for the poor folk who use the area to picnic, and it is a beautiful little thing. You have as much contempt for the little guys who need this parking lot as you do for the animals you are heartlessly abusing.
The latest destruction proposal translates as “Golly Gee, won’t you at least let me destroy at least a little bit!!!”
The reality of this outrage is complicit with your outrageous plan to destroy hundreds of trees between the BU and Longfellow Bridges, also kept as secret as possible, but rammed through the legislature with the apparent help of lying by the Charles River “Conservancy.” (MassDOT letter)
You give whatever excuse the latest listener will buy, but you do not mention the real reason. You are straightening out Memorial Drive to handle an off ramp from the Mass. Pike to Cambridge as outlined in the MBTA report of, probably, 2003, proving an off ramp feasible on the Grand Junction railroad bridge.
You are destroying the parking lot, as well, to speed up Memorial Drive to handle the off ramp traffic.
Nothing complicated about this outrage, irresponsible, of course, but you are fighting and fighting and fighting and lying that you are a responsible entity.
5. Continued and expanded use of poisons.
One excellent example of your lack of responsibility is the annual influx of algae destroying the Charles River as it affects the Charles River each time. This comes from your use of your beloved poisons at Ebersol Field next to the Massachusetts General Hospital.
One year, you were not happy with the results of your beloved poisons. So you dumped poisons at Ebersol Field marked “Do not use near water.” The next day, the Charles River was dead with algae infestation from Boston Harbor to the Mass. Ave. Bridge. And it comes back every year.
Whenever I talk to people about your love for dumping poisons on the banks of the Charles River, they are incredulous. They cannot conceive that a state agency could be so irresponsible.
But you keep doing it and you are fighting to expand its use at Magazine Beach, keeping reality as secret as possible. But using the code words, or simply refusing to respond to direct questions.
First of all, you are digging up the playing fields and replacing your beloved, introduced, poison drinking grass with new poison drinking grass. The existing stuff is not doing the job.
The native grass you destroyed lasted the better part of a century. But you destroyed it, and you are too irresponsible to seed it back in where it belongs after your sickly poison drinking stuff has failed.
Instead of responsible behavior, you are “improving” (code word) the hill to west of the playing field by ONCE AGAIN destroying healthy, well functioning native grass that does not require poisons. You are replacing the responsible grass with yet more sickly introduced stuff which cannot live without poisons.
You are doing the same thing behind the swimming pool. But you will not justify it BECAUSE YOU CANNOT JUSTIFY IT. You will keep this outrage as secret as you can get away with.
You have excellent, NATIVE, grass at Magazine Beach which you are determined to SECRETLY destroy. Instead of destroying it, you should seed back the responsible grass where you previously destroyed it.
And seed the responsible grass in the outrage that you have created out of the DESTROYED NESTING AREA of the Charles River White Geese to the east of the BU Bridge, WHERE YOU HAVE CONFINED THE CHARLES RIVER WHITE GEESE WITHOUT FOOD. And note a lot more detail in the referenced MassDOT letter.
6. Destruction of Playing Fields.
One of the lies in the outrages of the 2000s was that of “improvement” (code word, again) of the playing fields.
Normal human beings would not consider destruction of playing fields an improvement.
But you did destroy playing fields, in order to drain off the poisons you are dumping on the banks of the Charles River which should not and need not be dumped on the banks of the Charles River.
The responsible grass you destroyed to introduce sickly stuff drinking poisons survived the better part of a century.
But you love your poisons. So you destroyed playing fields to drain off poisons you should not and NEED NOT be using. You destroyed responsible, healthy, native grasses, and you want to expand your outrage.
Bring back the responsible, native grass, and discuss whether the expensive, fancy drainage for your poisons should be returned to playing fields.
7. Commercialization.
NO, NO, NO.
Another part of your lack of fitness for your job, combined with the irresponsibility of your fellow traveler in the City of Cambridge, and its fake groups. The City of Cambridge loves retail.
8. Summary.
Please reverse yourself.
Turn yourself into a department which is fit to manage the Charles River, its land, its waters, and its animals. Not a department keeping its outrageous behavior as secret as possible while telling people to look at everything else, directly or through fake groups.
The legislature severely punished the Metropolitan District Commission by taking away its bridges and folding the rest into the DCR.
The rump management of the detested Metropolitan District Commission has survived in the DCR. The rump management and the DCR clearly have learned nothing from the outrage of the legislature. The corrupt tactics in the fake groups and in the DCR, particularly in your repeated lies of omission or commission (MassDOT letter) fit the outrageously irresponsible entity which the legislature was trying to kill.
Since you are determined in persisting in behavior the legislature tried to wipe out, it is my strongest hope to get rid of you as much as is possible.
Sincerely,
Robert J. La Trémouille
Individually and as Chair of
Friends of the White Geese
